In Kapampangan folklore, Mariang Sinukuan is known as the guardian goddess of Mount Arayat, a volcano in the flat agricultural region of Pampanga in the Philippines. The land was known for its unusual bounty of forests and animals, and as Mariang watched over the needs of people in the nearby town, she would regularly leave fruits and animals at the doorstep of locals who needed food in difficult times.

One day, a group of young men sought out Mariang’s home in the mountains and asked for more than they actually needed. She did not object to this, and allowed them to pick a great load of fruits. She warned them, though, not to take any fruits from the forest without her permission.

On their way home, they went against her admonition and decided to take more. “She won’t notice, she has so much here,” one argued. But she did, and as soon as they had started to pick more fruit, their packs began to feel heavier, and the meat they were carrying had turned into rocks. The young men dropped their stolen and now spoiled goods and ran away, but before they could manage to escape the forest, Mariang Sinukuan appeared before them, and turned them into swine as punishment.

The story of Mariang Sinukuan is actually a Spanish twist on the original Kapampangan myth of Aring Sinukuan, a powerful male Kapampangan god who rivaled Apung Malyari, the god of Mount Pinatubo. Aring Sinukuan was the sun god of war and death, and taught the early inhabitants the works of metallurgy, wood cutting, rice culture, and war. When the Spanish arrived, they “rebranded” Sinukuan as a woman, thinking people would respect a goddess less than a god and therefore make it easier to subjugate the natives and convert them to Catholicism.

I actually enjoy both of these versions of the mythology, though it took a while for me to get here.

As a Filipinx American raised Catholic who has been coming to terms with the intergenerational trauma of my ancestors’ past and with my own present fear of anti-Asian attacks in the time of COVID-19, I have found conflict in my search for comfort in these difficult times.

Like many of us, I had trouble navigating the first few weeks of the pandemic. I started to adjust to this new life of social distancing and working from home, and I felt lucky to still have my job, my partner, and a support system of friends and family remotely available. However, a negative interaction in which a woman confronted me on the street during my daily walk and yelled to a child and her mother, “Stay away from the chink! She has coronavirus!” compounded by the sudden death of a family friend brought up more anxiety than I was used to managing. I lived in fear, started to have nightmares, and was in dire need of comfort.

My family had a rough time around the financial crisis of 2008, which prompted Lola, my grandmother, to drag me away from my computer and force the women in the family to pray the rosary every evening. As a teenager I had hated holding onto beads and chanting prayers I didn’t mean, but now I found myself clutching onto a rosary I had bought in memory of Lola years ago, and was grateful that I had it on me.

Understanding and processing the history of Spanish colonization put me at odds with reclaiming this form of prayer. The rosary was significantly conflicting to me. It was something I wasn’t sure I believed in anymore and represented a negative saga of erasure for me, and yet in this time of need it felt like the right tool to have at hand because it was how my Lola had taught me to comfort myself.

In search of comfort for mythology that I could relate to and feel more ethical about, I started delving into the pre-colonial mythology of the Philippines, and dug even deeper into Kapampangan mythology, as my father’s family was from Pampanga in northern Luzon. This is how I learned of Mariang Sinukuan, and this is also how I discovered kapwa.

Kapwa is an ideology that has existed before the time of Spanish colonization in the Philippines. It is based on the tenet that one can see oneself in all other living things, that we are all connected to each other and to nature, much like mycellium. For ancestral social groups kapwa was not just a set of virtue ethics, but a law that dictated the hierarchy of the villages to maintain social order and ensure all families’ needs were met and provided for.

This resonated deeply with me. I grew up often feeling lonely, and still struggle with this feeling today, especially with social media and the distancing required to keep us safe. By reaching out and finding the dance and writing community, I have been able to find myself in fellow artists.

I have also found myself in nature. Back in college I had fallen into a bout of depression and episodes of anxiety from PTSD. One day after an exam that I knew I had bombed I found myself walking around campus and finding a grove of redwood trees. I sat there and cried, and then after a moment found solace and comfort. I continued to visit the grove on a regular basis, which eventually led me to working in conservation. My most joyful of memories have been by the ocean. Even though I didn’t know how to swim, as a kid I’d chase waves and have them overtake me. Last year I went home to the Philippines after ten years, and in the hours I spent in the Pacific in Camarines Sur I felt the ancestors with me as I danced in the water.

Although I still find myself feeling lonely sometimes, I have always felt a connection to everyone and everything. Finding that this belief is something I share with those before me is exactly what I needed to learn. I can appreciate both Aring Sinukuan and Mariang Sinukuan. Despite its representation of a violent colonial past for me, I will still hold the rosary when it feels right because it specifically brings me closer to my Lola. For now, though, my go-to comfort lies in whatever nature I can find around me and the support of loved ones.